| The Times.] | [October 21, 1817. |
Drury-Lane Theatre.
Macbeth (with Matthew Lock’s music) was played here last night. Mr. Kean was Macbeth, Miss Campbell Lady Macbeth. We never saw the former to such advantage in the part. Mr. Kean’s Macbeth did not use to be a great favourite with us, except in the murder scene: but he last night, we thought, lifted the general character to almost an equality with this single scene. At least, he played the whole in a style of boldness and grandeur which we have not seen before. He was ‘proud and lion-hearted, and lacked fear.’ A thousand hearts seemed swelling in his bosom. His voice rolled from the bottom of his breast like thunder, and his eye flashed scorching flame. Instead of going back (as some cunning critics who have been peeping out of their cells at him ever since he began his career, to watch for his first failure, and to fall upon him magnanimously at a disadvantage, have been predicting), he advances even beyond himself with manly steps and a heroic spirit. In the banquet-scene he was particularly excellent; and called forth, with complete effect, those deep tones of nature and passion, recoiling upon and bursting with a convulsive movement from the heart, which are his very best and surest resource, though he has as yet made the least use of them. Let him go on, and open all the sluices of passion in his breast which are yet unlocked. He has done much: let him do as much more, by giving as much depth of internal emotion (where it is required) as he has done of external vehemence, by adding stateliness and a measured march to infinite force and truth, that he may be the greatest poet, as he unquestionably is the greatest prose-actor of the stage. When we speak of him as deficient in these qualities, we only do so in comparison with Mrs. Siddons: it would be a mockery both of him and the public to compare him with any one else. But she had something of divine about her which Mr. Kean has not; he in general only shows us the utmost force of what is human. Of Miss Campbell’s Lady Macbeth we are almost afraid to speak, because we cannot speak favourably of it; yet a failure in this part is by no means decisive against the general merits of an actress. But she was altogether too tame and drawling for Lady Macbeth; and some attempts at originality failed of effect from the timidity with which they were executed.
KEAN’S OTHELLO
| The Times.] | [October 27, 1817. |
Drury-Lane Theatre.
Othello was played here on Saturday to a crowded house. There were two new appearances—Mr. Maywood as Iago, and a young lady as Desdemona. The name of this young debutante is not announced; but her reception was exceedingly flattering. Her face is handsome, her person elegant, her voice sweet, and her general deportment graceful and easy. There was also a considerable portion of tenderness and delicacy of feeling in several of the passages; but perhaps less than the character would bear. The only faults which we think it necessary to mention in her performance were, a too continual movement of the hands up and down, and sometimes a monotonous cadence in the recitation of the blank verse. Mr. Maywood’s Iago had some of the faults which we have noticed in his former characters; but in the most trying scenes in the third act with Othello, we thought him exceedingly happy and successful. His conception was just, and his execution effective. There was a cold stillness in his manner which was more frightful than the expression of the most inveterate malignity. He seemed to crawl and watch for his prey like the spider, instead of darting upon it like the serpent. In the commencement of the part his timidity appeared to prevent him from doing justice to his intention, and once or twice his voice grew loud and unmanageable, so as to excite some marks of disapprobation. Mr. Kean’s Othello is, we suppose, the finest piece of acting in the world. It is impossible either to describe or praise it adequately. We have never seen any actor so wrought upon, so ‘perplexed in the extreme.’ The energy of passion, as it expresses itself in action, is not the most terrific part; it is agony of his soul, showing itself in looks and tones of voice. In one part, where he listens in dumb despair to the fiend-like insinuations of Iago, he presented the very face, the marble aspect of Dante’s Count Ugolino. On his fixed eyelids ‘Horror sat plumed.’ In another part, where a gleam of hope or of tenderness returns to subdue the tumult of his passions, his voice broke in faltering accents from his overcharged breast. His lips might be said less to utter words, than to bleed drops of blood gushing from his heart. An instance of this was in his pronunciation of the line ‘Of one that loved not wisely but too well.’ The whole of this last speech was indeed given with exquisite force and beauty. We only object to the virulence with which he delivers the last line, and with which he stabs himself—a virulence which Othello would neither feel against himself at that moment, nor against the turbaned Turk (whom he had slain) at such a distance of time. His exclamation on seeing his wife, ‘I cannot think but Desdemona’s honest,’ was ‘the glorious triumph of exceeding love;’ a thought flashing conviction on his mind, and irradiating his countenance with joy, like sudden sunshine. In fact, almost every scene or sentence in this extraordinary exhibition is a master-piece of natural passion. The convulsed motion of the hands, and the involuntary swellings of the veins of the forehead in some of the most painful situations, should not only suggest topics of critical panegyric, but might furnish studies to the painter or anatomist.
KEAN AND MISS O’NEILL
| The Times.] | [December 2, 1817. |
Covent-Garden Theatre.